If You Didn't Arrive Here Depressed

Announced today: Orchestras Feeding America National Food Drive

Yes, it's tied to a movie promotion, but it's all for a very worthy cause and such efforts are especially important in such fraught times.

Yet meanwhile...

• Minnesota Orchestra to cut budget, staff and salaries
  

• Philadelphia Orchestra "is lurching into crisis."
  

• Atlanta Symphony Orchestra to cut pay, freeze hiring
  

• New Jersey Symphony Hunkers Down For the Future
  

• Master Chorale to Shut Down in May
  

• Cleveland Orchestra plans 'deep' cuts; Welser-Most takes pay cut
  

And those are just the headlines from the last week.

Elsewhere, people are trying to keep a smile on it:

• $11 tickets beginning at 11 a.m. on April 11 for 11 Days
  

• First Annual New Music Bake Sale

Alas, what a day in the world. Perhaps that explains the recent popularity of this distraction. Miss Mussel may be mining Twitter parameters, but personally, my mind has been escaping by considering what other plot lines could be effectively recast as Facebook status updates.